short term mission

Every Friday I get a lecture from diferent mission agencies from the U.K. It's a privilege to hear and see the amazing work that men and women across the U.K. are doing in the name of Jesus. Perhaps one day I'll find myself working for one of these agencies, but (and there always is a but isn't there?) I am failing to see the sense in going out with these organisations to random countries on the short term.

You know what I'm talking about. These 2-4 weeks summer teams that people go on spending from one to three thousand pounds to get there and look after themselves. To be honest, that money would have been far better spent just being sent to the communities we visit, rather than dragging our unskilled butts over there on a glorfied holiday.

Don't get me wrong I am not judging the motives of the people who take part in these trips, for I myself have done them. In fact their heart is good, because they see a need and want to do something about it. However, that desire is not being used to its full potential in the current way it is being exercised. Perhaps it is good to go once, in order to have our hearts and minds opened to the poverty in the world, but to keep doing it simply isn't productive.

I mean what do we really have to offer a remote community in the middle of Africa anyway (sorry to stereotype)? Sure we can go build a school, but there are plenty of people in those countries who have building skills themselves, and we only take the trade away from the locals. It's white colonialism gone wrong all over again. We made the mess in the first place. Now we see the mess and think we've got all the answers to fix it.

Yes indeed however it is the responsibility of the better off to take care of the poor, but we need to be more creative, more sensitive in how we approach it, and we need to act fast. I don't have all the answers and I'm certainly willing to listen to other points of view but here are some of the things I think we can do:

We can pray. We can rally organisations, governments and powers at be into doing the action they should be. We can carefully give of our finances and resources from our vast reserves. There is a scope for churches partnering alongside other churches (the same body of Christ) in different countries for the long term. We could even go and teach for the long term. Although we would need to be careful how we do that, because I don't think that Africa really needs to be 'westernised' in the cultural sense of the word, as I believe it would lose it's own cultural and spiritual richness.

These are all very raw thoughts and feelings from a naive young man, but watch this space as I hope to develop them into something tangible real soon.